Walter Scott

Georgian author, aristocrat and aesthete Horace Walpole was one of the first writers who was able to launch an aesthetic movement to match his writing, predating Sir Walter Scott and his cod-Highland pageantry, or William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. And a recent visit to The Vyne in Hampshire gave me some insight […]

On December 28th, 1734, Rob Roy MacGregor, the real-life original of Sir Walter Scott’s eponymous hero, died peacefully in his bed at Inverlochlarig Beg, Balquhidder, after a lifetime of reaving and rebellion that won him folk hero status in his own lifetime, and also a royal pardon from King George I which just saved him from […]

Deep in the heart of Walter Scott country, between his own-built architectural fantasy at Abbotsford House, his favorite vantage point at Scott’s View, and his last resting place at Dryburgh Abbey, I chanced across The Main Street Trading Company—voted Independent Bookseller of the Year 2012 in The Bookseller’s 2012 Industry Awards; it was also winner of [...]